The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4 eBook

On page 48 will be found some lines to one of Mrs.
Williams’ daughters. The acrostic on page
65 is to another. These would both be Emma Isola’s
pupils.

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TRANSLATIONS

Page 66. Translations from Vincent Bourne.

Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), the English Latin poet,
entered Westminster School on the foundation in 1710,
and, on leaving Cambridge, returned to Westminster
as a master. He was so indolent a teacher and
disciplinarian that Cowper, one of his pupils, says:
“He seemed determined, as he was the best, so
to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line.”
Bourne’s Poemata appeared in 1734.
It is mainly owing to Cowper’s translations
(particularly “The Jackdaw”) that he is
known, except to Latinists. Lamb first read Bourne
in 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in April of that
year he says:—­“Since I saw you I have
had a treat in the reading way which comes not every
day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne which were
quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all
laid out upon town and scenes, a proper counterpoise
to some people’s rural extravaganzas.
Why I mention him is that your Power of Music reminded
me of his poem of the ballad singer in the Seven Dials.
Do you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught
Newton the A B C, which after all he says he hesitates
not to call Newton’s Principia? I
was lately fatiguing myself with going through a volume
of fine words by L’d Thurlow, excellent words,
and if the heart could live by words alone, it could
desire no better regale, but what an aching vacuum
of matter—­I don’t stick at the madness
of it, for that is only a consequence of shutting
his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elisabeth
poets—­from thence I turned to V. Bourne—­what
a sweet unpretending pretty-mannered matter-ful
creature, sucking from every flower, making a flower
of every thing—­his diction all Latin, and
his thoughts all English. Bless him, Latin wasn’t
good enough for him—­why wasn’t he
content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote
in.”

On the publication of Album Verses, wherein
these nine poems from Vincent Bourne were printed,
Lamb reviewed the book in Moxon’s Englishman’s
Magazine for September, 1831, under the title “The
Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne” (see Vol.
I.). There he quoted “The Ballad Singers,”
and the “Epitaph on an Infant Sleeping”—­remarking
of Bourne:—­“He is ‘so Latin,’
and yet ‘so English’ all the while.
In diction worthy of the Augustan age, he presents
us with no images that are not familiar to his countrymen.
His topics are even closelier drawn; they are not
so properly English, as Londonish. From
the streets, and from the alleys, of his beloved metropolis,
he culled his objects, which he has invested with
an Hogarthian richness of colouring. No town
picture by that artist can go beyond his BALLAD-SINGERS;
Gay’s TRIVIA alone, in verse, comes up to the
life and humour of it.”